Walking Is Transportation

The Walker, Out of Hibernation At Last

WHEN IT'S MORE LIKE FLYING

That's the critical difference warm(er) weather makes. The distance you bridge on foot, the time you take to get there, the destination itself--all are secondary to the delight you feel as you take to the streets and peel them back, one by one, until you achieve a pace and a rhythm that seem like preparations for lift-off. In the end, you're almost disappointed to get where, after all, you were going.

That's what happened last night. I was off to a dance class, fully prepared to steel myself against the wind and the cold, et voila!: no wind, no cold. Instead, warmer temperatures and a soft breeze whose effects I didn't have to hunker down to ward off. I passed through the same dark and utterly deserted streets as I do every Monday night, but last night the streets weren't bleak and depressing, somehow. In any case, they didn't matter; I was flying.

Today, in intermittent rain, I walked about six miles, some of it fairly hilly, and the experience was the same. Joyous. On this gray, damp day, my walk felt at one point like dance and at another, like flight.

The Vertical Life, or Hill-Walking on Staten Island, Part 5

A FAVORITE RETURNS

Whether they're Staten Islanders or not, Walking is Transportation.com readers wrote to say how much they enjoyed "The Vertical Life," a series posted here last October, showing and telling how residents of the island's North Shore negotiate the peaks and valleys we live on, in, under or near.

There were omissions, of course, and readers were quick to point them out--for which I'm grateful.

Tompkinsville reader/neighbor Richard Wonder appreciated the photo and description I posted of the stair/walkway on the north side of Scribner Avenue, going west from Westervelt to Bismarck. But he wondered why I hadn't included the stair/walkway on the south side as well.

Other readers wondered why there was no mention of stairways that used to go somewhere but don't anymore. Still other readers simply wanted to see more of same.

So here goes--the first few of what I hope will be a continuing series. If there's a hillside walkway or stair I've missed, please e-mail me at [email protected] and let me know. Thanks!

The Two Rectories

This hand-colored postcard, postmarked 1911, shows St. Peter's R.C. Church on St. Marks Place near Westervelt Avenue, St. George, Staten Island, prior to the addition of the building's towering campanile, now capped with a gold cross. The Gothic-style frame building to its right was the then-rectory.

This digital image, taken January 9, 2008, shows the much larger rectory that occupies the same site today, set well back from the street, with lawn, plantings and devotional statuary on either side of a central path leading onto the property from the sidewalk.

St. Peter's Stairs to Nowhere

Looking up the hill from Carroll Place, it's clear that the entry steps that interrupted the expanse of stone retaining wall were filled in and cinderblocked over long ago. Much of the path leading to a St. Marks Place house that's no longer there has already been buried by crabgrass, with more to follow. That's the rear of St. Peter's Rectory to the right, with its massive stone retaining wall and formal stairway.

West of the set of blocked stairs shown above is another stairway, also blocked and slowly disappearing, that led from Carroll Place to St. Peter's original St. Marks Place rectory, demolished long ago and replaced with the structure shown at left, seen from the rear.

Congestion Pricing, Take 2

Our house at the corner of St. Marks Place and Westervelt Avenue, St. George, Staten Island, N.Y., Thanksgiving Day, 2007

Resurrecting an old idea (and maybe a better one)

[I'm convinced that no matter which form the Feds decide to fund and the city finally adopts, Congestion Pricing will be a major benefit to pedestrians and walkers--and all New Yorkers. Not only because it'll generate the revenues needed to pay for expansion of and improvements to New York City's public transit system, but because it will make our streets safer and more pleasant for all those who use them.]

In a November 12, 2007 editorial in the Daily News, veteran transportation consultant Brian Ketcham proposes to base Mayor Bloomberg's Congestion Pricing (CP) proposal on an idea that planners, politicians and transportation activists have been yakking about for decades.

"Charging cars and trucks to get into the central business district makes perfect sense," Ketcham says, "but the rest of [Mayor Bloomberg's] scheme would be a logistical nightmare," requiring "costly administration and enforcement" and "adding little revenue."

Calling the mayor's existing CP proposal "needlessly complex," Ketcham advises the mayor to "ditch the elaborate detection grid"--"a full-scale network with 340 charging stations on Manhattan streets south of 86th St."--and replace it with a system that would "close the loophole of the four untolled East River bridges in Brooklyn and Queens."

Take 2: An alternate Congestion Pricing plan

Ketcham proposes the city install overhead charging monitors on the six inbound bridge spans and set the congestion fee so that there's no unfair difference between any CP charge and regular MTA tolls.

He would also install 19 toll collection stations that would, he says, eliminate the free ride now enjoyed by those who enter the central business district from starting points north of 60th Street.

And that's not all.

Paying for the right to occupy prime real estate

Ketcham also recommends the city "eliminate all free and long-term street parking and charge hefty garage rates at on-street meters." Such a pricing recommendation brings the cost of street parking into line with what Manhattan parking lots and garages charge and substantially boosts potential revenue.

But market-based pricing offers benefits that may be even more important. This alternate CP proposal sends the message that bringing a private car into one of the most congested sectors in the country isn't a basic human right; that streets are public spaces that must be shared; that automobiles can't continue to dictate who uses the street and how.

All in all, I think Ketcham's proposal makes a lot of sense. It's easier and less costly to implement and maintain; it makes the cost of entering the central business district by car more equitable (drivers pay the same, no matter how they get there). Ketcham's research shows that closing the various loopholes also eliminates more cars and yields more revenue than the mayor's existing CP plan.

I hope Ketcham's proposal gets the serious consideration--by the New York City Traffic Congestion Mitigation Commission, among others--that it deserves.

Facing Fact

Uh-oh. It's that walking shoe image again, and you know what that means. (If you don't know what that means, see my post of November 4, 2007.)

EVEN SWEAT-WICKING GARMENTS AREN'T ENOUGH

I'm a fair weather walker. That's the fact I have to face.

I thought this year might be different. That maybe resolve and sweat-wicking polyester garments would make me more willing, even enthusiastic about stepping out of doors.

Well, winter hasn't even officially happened. The weather's been nippy, but hardly bone-chilling. Yet last night, walking the half mile or so between the ETG Book Cafe in Tompkinsville, Staten Island and my house in St. George, I realized how tense my body was. Not even below freezing, and already I'm steeling myself against the wind and the cold.

Call it a seasonal adjustment

The fundamentals haven't changed. I still walk everywhere, except when the time's too short, the distance is too great, or the weather's too bad. I'm what has changed.

In late spring, summer and early fall, I do two types of walks; those of necessity and those of discovery. On longer walks of necessity--the exciting, surprising ones--the distinction melts away and an errand becomes an adventure.

But when the weather gets below 40 degrees, as it's been on and off for the last few days, the prospect of a walk loses nearly all its appeal. Yes, the cold can be invigorating; and yes, trees in a winter landscape have a singular beauty--for somebody else.

No hibernating here

That doesn't mean Walking is Transportation.com is going into hibernation. Instead it'll cover transportation issues more generally--issues like Congestion Pricing, Bus Rapid Transit, Light vs. Heavy Rail.

It may be too early in the process to expect noticeable changes in the culture--as drivers s-l-o-w-l-y begin to realize they have to rethink their choices and their behavior--but I'll be looking for that, too.

I hope you'll stick around.

S.I. Greenbelt plan to banish invasive plants may benefit walkers, too

Section of cobblestone street-tree base, Richmond Terrace, St. George, Staten Island

NOT, I ADMIT, WHAT I WAS EXPECTING

First, Staten Island Greenbelt Administrator Adena Long spoke about the park's need to accommodate alternative forms of transportation. She actually used those words. Then Long described plans to provide a path for walkers and cyclists.

Long addressed the November 1 semiannual meeting of Protectors of Pine Oak Woods, Staten Island's largest environmental organization. I was there not only as a Protectors member, but to make my case for safe access to the Greenbelt for walkers and cyclists, which I assumed meant installing sidewalks. I had expected opposition to this idea. Maybe even confrontation. And then, before I could open my mouth, Adena Long made it clear the pedestrian and bicycle path I planned to fight for was already in the works. Not a discouraging word was heard from the audience, many of whom had fought long and hard to create the Greenbelt decades ago and are determined not only to protect it, but expand it.

Long said the path will be created as part of a plan to defend the Greenbelt at its perimeter, which is the usual point of entry for invasive weeds and vines that can destroy very quickly the diversity and balance of plant life within the park. This perimeter 'strip' won't be just a poured concrete walk along the edge of a roadway. It will be designed, landscaped and maintained--with the bicycle and walking path included as part of the design.

This project will take years to complete, of course. What matters more, I think, is that it's being done at all. And that it just may represent a change in consciousness at the city's largest park. A change that begins to acknowledge pedestrians and bicyclists as co-equal users--with motorized vehicles--of public streets and roads.

The vertical life: An afterword

Exterior section of east wall, Snug Harbor Cultural Center, Tysen Street at Fillmore Street, New Brighton, Staten Island

PRESERVE THE PEDESTRIAN INFRASTRUCTURE

I've just finished the The Vertical Life, a four-part entry that appears in the four posts immediately preceding this one. Originally, I planned an idiosyncratic profile of the five hilly neighborhoods at the northeastern tip of Staten Island, the fifth and oft' forgotten New York City borough.

What I wanted was to celebrate a life spent marching up and down hills and the sometimes amazing accommodations people have made in order to be able to live that life. What I've come away with is the conviction that these accommodations to hillside living--steps, stairways and paths--are much more than quaint throwbacks to a time when we walked rather than drove up hills.

Our history and our future

Hillside stairways aren't rarities. In upper Manhattan and the west Bronx, these vertical pathways are often massive feats of engineering, overlooked by equally massive apartment blocks of the 1920s and '30s.

In the hilly, close-to-the-ferry neighborhoods of Staten Island's north shore, the scale of hillside stairways is smaller, simpler, more intimate. Paths are bordered by trees, shrubs and grasses, sometimes overgrown by them. These vertical connecting links are, no less than some of the century-old buildings that surround them, a part of Staten Island and New York City history that deserves preservation and restoration.

Whether in upper Manhattan, the west Bronx, or the north shore of Staten Island--and even in their sometimes derelict state--these stairways are part of our city's pedestrian infrastructure. People use them. More would use them if they were in better physical condition and better maintained. Now that serious and ongoing health and environmental degradation is finally acknowledged even at the federal level, state and local policy-makers are actively seeking ways to reduce our dependence on private transportation. These and other forms of pedestrian infrastructure are a perfect fit.

As support systems for walking--an activity promoted by the N.Y.C. Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and the Department for the Aging--these steps, stairs and walkways deserve substantial upgrading, with new concrete, railings, signage, lighting and drought-resistant, low-maintenance landscaping. Like the reopened walkways on the Manhattan and Williamsburg bridges, these hillside amenities are part of New York City and Staten Island history. If we're serious about encouraging alternative forms of transportation, we'll make these steps, stairways and paths part of our future too.

The vertical life, or Hill-walking on Staten Island, Part 4

Adobe Blues mural, south side of Lafayette Avenue near Fillmore Street, New Brighton, Staten Island.

IN NEW BRIGHTON, HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT

There was no way I could survey hill-walking in Staten Island's close-to-the-ferry neighborhoods and not include New Brighton, one of New York's earliest suburban developments, organized in 1839.

But I'll admit I wasn't expecting much.

Like a lot of locals, but not many others, I knew all about the one derelict but still functioning stairway between the corner of York Terrace and East Buchanan Street at the top, and York Avenue, just up the hill from Fillmore Street, at the bottom.

Seen from a passing car––like so many other experiences walkers have and drivers don't––it would appear to be just another concrete stairway leading who-knows-where and not worth a second glance or thought.

East Buchanan Street from the bottom of the hill at Franklin Avenue--the starting-off point.

Sure enough, a few yards past the top of the hill, just as I remembered, the narrow path leading to the stairs begins, then continues down the hill to York Avenue.

NEW BRIGHTON CLIFF-DWELLINGS: A DIFFERENT ANGLE

Turning right and continuing up York Avenue, I wasn't surprised to see more cliff-dwellings; I remembered them from past treks, but not in detail. I'd never noticed how far back from the street these hilltop houses were sited--especially as compared to those on Corson Avenue in Tompkinsville (Part 1) and St. Pauls Avenue in Stapleton (Part 2).

Because the grade here is less steep than on other nearby streets with hillside houses, there's less need for buttresses, terraces, retaining walls and the like. In several cases, a single continuous stair runs from the sidewalk to the front door.

A little farther up York Avenue near Carlyle Street, I half-saw this stairway as I passed it. But that glance was enough to make me turn back and take a second look. Even in its deteriorated condition, the stairway's proportions told me this was either a public amenity or the entry to a substantial residential property. There was no sign, no marker, nothing.

For a while there, going up the steps and continuing up an overgrown path, I worried that I might be trespassing.

But soon enough, I saw a familiar street sign ahead: Highview Avenue. I knew exactly where I was. I turned right and walked back to East Buchanan Street, the starting point.

* * *

HAVE I MISSED SOMETHING? If you notice I've left out a stairway, path or walkway in one of the neighborhoods mentioned in this four-part entry, please let me know: [email protected] And thanks.

The vertical life, or Hill-walking on Staten Island, Part 3

Detail, ironwork gate, Brooklyn Botanic Garden, 2007

A LITTLE UNFINISHED BUSINESS

If you're looking for stairs, paths, walkways and myriad other weight-bearing toeholds that people have cobbled together to help them get up and down hills, this is the place. Stapleton, Staten Island.

We'll get there shortly. But first, there's a little unfinished business on Ward Hill to take care of. [For more on Ward Hill, see Part 2.]

URBAN ARCHAEOLOGY: THE HIDDEN PATHS OF NIXON AVENUE

Walking along Nixon, a U-shaped block with great views of the Narrows, there's no reason you'd notice this rusting iron stair-rail sticking out of a blanket of leaf-cover. It's the only clue that an old stairway leading to the Ward mansion, at the very top of Ward Hill, began here.

If you lift the leaves that cover it, you can see the foundation stones that support the stair-rail's bottom step.

The story goes that the father of a little girl who lived on Nixon Avenue at least a decade ago created a path for her to use on her way to and from Trinity Lutheran School. The path began here (see that concrete ledge on the right?) . . .

. . . and ended here, in what is now a lot-size forest at the bottom of the hill on St. Pauls Avenue near Cebra Avenue, Stapleton. Trinity Lutheran is right across the street. Only the barest trace of the path survives, and only where it began, up on Nixon.

UP ST. PAULS, INTO THE HILLS

Our walk up St. Pauls Avenue starts in Tompkinsville, where St. Pauls and Van Duzer street begin their parallel routes. They start from a single point--Van Duzer below, St. Pauls above--then fan out into a wider and wider V.

The long, slow rise of St. Pauls Avenue begins to pick up here, at Paxton Street.

Almost immediately on the right--and up!--are cliff houses rivaling those on Corson Avenue in Tompkinsville for dizzying height and complex stair arrangements.

A PEDESTRIAN INFRASTRUCTURE

Staten Island's close-to-the-ferry neighborhoods were developed at a time when many, perhaps most, people walked. An old pedestrian infrastructure survives.

These stone steps up from the roadway at the corner of Beach Street and St. Pauls Avenue in Stapleton are an example.

There are steps up from the St. Pauls Avenue roadway at the entrance to each house as well.

There's even sidewalk seating.

WELCOME TO STONE STREET, UNLESS YOU'RE A CAR

Located opposite Trossach Road off St. Pauls Avenue in Stapleton, Stone Street is probably more accurately described as a hilly alley than a street. It's a slice of old Staten Island the home improvers haven't caught up with yet.

Stone Street is only one block long––from St. Pauls to Van Duzer. Too narrow for cars, the street has only one house on it, a modest cottage.

Walking up Stone Street from Van Duzer to St. Pauls. Handrails run almost the entire length of the street. There's not a car in sight. Bliss.

Glimpsed on a porch on St. Pauls Avenue near Cebra Avenue, Stapleton.

The vertical life, or Hill-walking on Staten Island, Part 2

Cobblestone walk, Wall Street between St. Marks Place and Belmont Place, St. George.

They didn't flatten Ward, Grymes, Todt and Emerson hills on Staten Island in order to lay down a street grid, as they flattened Murray Hill in Manhattan, according to a recent article in The New Yorker. On Staten Island, it looks like they just made roadways around the hills, or built access roads where they could––that is, wherever the grade wasn't impossibly steep.

Staten Islanders found another way to make their ascents and descents less arduous and more convenient. They built a series of steps, stairways and walkways that people still use today to get up and down the hills.

Two of these stairways––both on the south side of Victory Boulevard in Tompkinsville––are longer, wider and more substantial than any I've found in St. George or in Tompkinsville north of Victory Boulevard.

But first, a few urban-archaeological stair-remnants. Catch 'em while you can.

STAIRWAYS TO LOT-SIZE FORESTS AND STOCKADE FENCES

Close by on Victory, also on the north side, near Fiedler Avenue, are the remnants of two sets of stone retaining walls and slate steps. One will soon disappear under leaf-cover, then earth. Both led to what probably were residences. Today they lead to lot-size forests of maple, ailanthus.

Maples are growing undisturbed in and around another stone-wall-with-steps remnant, this one leading directly into a stockade fence. You'll find it south of Victory Boulevard, on the west side of Westervelt Avenue between Hendricks and Benziger avenues in Tompkinsville.

GETTING UP WARD HILL

Of course you could just walk up Fiedler Avenue––shown here on its rise from Victory Boulevard in Tompkinsville––and use the sidewalk like a normal person, as my Aunt Harriet would have said. For the rest of us, there are other ways up Ward Hill. The east stairway, and the west. As you'll see, both have their charms.

THE EAST STAIRWAY. This is the closer of the two stairways to the Staten Island Ferry terminal. There's no sign or marker. It's just sort of there, in a little down-at-the-heels courtyard off the south side of Victory Boulevard in Tompkinsville, roughly parallel to Monroe Avenue, across the street.

Not an auspicious beginning, but wait. It gets prettier, the commercial clatter from the street below starts to subside a bit, and then . . .

. . . before you know it, you're at the top--Tompkins Circle--where you stop a moment to look out at the bay, take a brief rest, and maybe do some stretches before heading down the hill to Victory Boulevard.

THE WEST STAIRWAY. This handsome Craftsman-style stone and timber archway leads to a wide and open stairway, obviously much used, that takes you to Willis Avenue and the adjacent Avon Place.

If you'd like to sample some of Ward Hill's panoramic views of the bay--with Brooklyn in the distance--walk left on Willis to Fiedler Avenue. Turn right on Fiedler and continue up the hill to Tompkins Circle. Stay on the bay side of the circle and you're practically guaranteed to see water. And Brooklyn.

UP NEXT: The third part of this entry, covering small sectors of Ward Hill and Stapleton.

The vertical life, or Hill-walking

Fiedler Avenue, Ward Hill, Staten Island, looking down at Victory Boulevard at the bottom of the street and across at Tompkinsville and the New Brighton hills. The ferry is a 15-minute walk away.

WHO KNEW?

We'd both grown up in Manhattan. She in a spacious, old-fashioned walk-up flat facing Morningside Park, near Columbia. I in a cramped two-room apartment in Chelsea before it became a gay mecca.

These experiences hadn't prepared us for a move to a place where the ferry is the boat, where Manhattan is the city, and where PTAs hold Chinese Auctions, which after 30 years of living here are still a total mystery.

I'm talking about Staten Island. Specifically, the north shore of that island, and more specifically the neighborhoods of St. George, New Brighton, Tompkinsville/Ward Hill, and Stapleton. All within walking distance of the ferry and the island's bus and rail lines, and all hilly. Sometimes very hilly.

GETTING UP THE HILL WITHOUT A CAR

What I've come to appreciate are the ways in which people have adapted to living on hills, the same way they've adapted to the ferry schedule.

One of the most interesting of these adaptations are a collection of still-functioning stairways, walkways and paths up and down the hills in the older close-to-the ferry neighborhoods. As well as the bizarre arrangement of retaining walls and stairways some residents have to negotiate, just to reach their front doors.

What follows is the first of a two-part entry about these adaptations in the neighborhoods of St. George and Tompkinsville, many still in active use, others well along in the process of reverting to nature. The second part of this entry will cover Tompkinsville/Ward Hill, New Brighton and Stapleton.

HILLSIDE STEPS AND STAIRS
St. George and Tompkinsville

Stone retaining wall and public stairway, St. Peter's R.C. Church, St. Marks Place, St. George, connecting St. Marks and Carroll places.

Stairway from Carroll Place to St. Marks Place. St. Peter's R.C. Church, left.

Stone wall and steps leading from Sherman Avenue, Tompkinsville, to Fort Hill Park, which is both the name of a street and a recently dedicated 'Forever Wild' park on the adjacent property.

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The three photos directly above show (1, 2) the steps leading down from Fort Hill Park to Sherman Avenue; and (3) the road up Fort Hill Park to the top, from the corner of Hendricks and Westervelt avenues.

STEPS AND STAIRS TO HILLSIDE HOUSES
St. George and Tompkinsville

Our first house on St. Marks Place near Westervelt Avenue, St. George. The negatives of living 18 steps above the street are obvious. Less obvious are the sense of privacy and relative solitude that, most of the time, were adequate compensation.

Garden gate and stone retaining wall and stairway, Carroll Place, St. George

Stone wall and slate step entry to the Schoverling mansion, a New York City landmark, Westervelt Avenue at Benziger Avenue, Tompkinsville.

This amazing group of cliff dwellings is on the north side of Corson Avenue between Jersey Street and Westervelt Avenue, Tompkinsville.

STEPS AS SIDEWALK
St. George and Tompkinsville

In this photo, walking west from Westervelt Avenue, the rise on the north side of Scribner Avenue, Tompkinsville, is gradual.

These photos show the stairways leading to the north and south sides of Corson Avenue, Tompkinsville, walking west from Westervelt Avenue. The north sidewalk also rises gradually as it continues west, becoming fully elevated, with entries and lower stairways leading to each house cut into the massive retaining wall that looms over the roadway.

An approach to the elevated sidewalk on the north side of the street, looking east.

[Up next, the second part of this entry, covering New Brighton, Tompkinsville/Ward Hill and Stapleton. Coming very soon.]